Toward a United and Diverse Defense DisinformationAgainst

All of us here are not new to conversations about how, indeed, once and for all, we can expose and discredit disinformation. It is a huge task—an understatement of the decade, maybe. The disinformation machinery that we are up against has long decades of historical distortion, and years of fake news, long established a foothold in our technology, in our digital spaces, and in the way we process information.

Many of us continue to be targets of this machinery, of this deliberate campaign to distort facts and manipulate the truth. I’m certain that, especially in the lead-up to and during the last elections, our offices have reached out to each other, to help each other fight false news and mis- and disinformation hurled against us. We have shared with each other links, photos, social-media cards, and videos that we may use to debunk any or all comments, posts, or vlogs that spread lies about our politics, our work, and our lives.

At this point, the attacks have become predictable. We can already identify the top issues that paid trolls utilize, the narratives they perpetuate, and the repeated scripts they churn out.

We know that the moment we say something sharp or critical about the past and present administrations—no matter how policy-focused, no matter how constructive, no matter how true—the trolls are prepared to strike, armed with their spliced videos, their memes, their quote cards. We then expect paid political vloggers, influencers, and mouthpieces to show up, weighing in on issues, always ready to defend their leaders and attack ours at all costs.

In a Harvard study entitled “Public Parallel Spheres: Influence Operations in the 2022 Philippine Elections,” in which former Vice President Leni Robredo was one of the reactors in the presentation, the researchers said that while there was a continuation of disinformation innovations from 2016 and 2019, influence operations on social media became even more sophisticated in the run-up to the 2022 elections, enabling the construction of a parallel political reality. The study cited the pro-administration political reality, in which a fully funded content production painted the ruling family as the “real victims” of the EDSA People Power Revolution, the so-called “liberal elites.” So I’m sorry my dear LP and CALD, and allies, your ideology was made a counter-hero. Theirs went mainstream, even in the form of a cinematic production.

What’s worse is that the disinformation doesn’t end and stays online. It spills into and affects our lives, our relationships, and our communities. For example, complaints have, in fact, been filed against many of us, including Senator Leila de Lima, because of false information on social media.

For the dear allies and friends from other parts of our home region, who may not have heard of this story, in July 2019, the Philippine National Police implicated several of us in an anti-Duterte “Bikoy” video—a series of videos, actually—that tagged members of then President Duterte’s circle as members of drug syndicates. The videos were then used to spread disinformation about us supposedly pushing the general public into mass protesting in order to unseat Duterte as President. An “inciting to sedition” complaint was even filed against us; thankfully and rightfully, we were cleared of that spurious complaint.

Senator Kiko Pangilinan has been a target of disinformation campaigns as well, particularly by YouTube vloggers, who went so far as spreading false information about him in regard to the agricultural issue that he mentioned earlier, even about violence against women. Senator Kiko—one of the most faithful allies of the women’s and feminist movement here in the Philippines for women’s rights and welfare. There was also fake information that a case had been filed against him for these spurious issues.

I commend again Senator Kiko for filing a cyber-libel complaint against these individuals, as well as against Google, for not removing these defamatory content even after 82 of these had already been reported to the tech company. No one, no individual, no company should get away scot-free with acts like this.

Senator Kiko, along with former minority Senator Frank Drilon, also filed Proposed Senate Resolution No. 953, directing the then Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes to conduct a review, in aid of legislation, of the country’s existing criminal laws, to consider the rise of social-media platforms and the rapid advancement of technology.

In one of the hearings on Senator Kiko and Senator Drilon’s resolution, resource speaker U.P. professor Yvonne Chua also revealed that former VP Leni had been the biggest victim of disinformation. Every week, the negative messaging was all about and focused on

VP Leni. There was also a deluge of positive messaging, albeit false and misleading, promoted in favor of the then-presidential candidate and now president. This already shows us the dichotomy of realities that we see on our feeds.

That Senate hearing also shared findings from another academic study titled “Architects of Disinformation,” which tagged ad agencies and PR strategists, hired by politicians, to be chief architects of networked disinformation campaigns. The study also said that disinformation workers—the paid trolls, the paid influencers—are all driven by financial, political, and psychological factors. The disinformation machinery has indeed been turned into a money-making industry. When people are painfully reeling from the health and economic effects of COVID-19, when Filipinos have long suffered the lack of decent jobs and livelihoods in our country, who can really completely blame them if they accept work in this industry?

Fighting disinformation will take more than our individual efforts to take down posts, report platforms, or bust bots. Besides holding disinformation architects to account, we must also address the conditions that allow this industry to exist: The level of poverty, the level that encourages disinformation work, the lack of literacy that permits the easy spread of mis- and disinformation, and the culture that allows hate speech, deceit, and lies.

Even beyond politics and governance, around the world, the very real implications of disinformation are also seen in the spread of anti-vaccination information on social media, creating serious implications for public health and our regional and global fight against COVID-19. In Asia, Thailand’s “Anti-Fake News Center,” under the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, recorded around 500 fake news stories about COVID-19 just between January and June 2020. Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Informatics identified 1,513 COVID-19 hoax posts between January 2020 and April 2021. The Vietnamese government also discovered 650 cases of mis- and disinformation between January and May 2020.

It is not an exaggeration to say that disinformation has life and death consequences. In India, a fake news story claiming that strangers were sedating and abducting children led to extreme violence and mob killings of individuals. The hoax was translated into regional languages. It reached rural areas where digital literacy is even lower. It spread like wildfire through WhatsApp. In just two months, at least 20 people were killed, among them homeless people, picnic goers, and an elderly woman.

These real-world incidents only show the urgency of our task. We now have to continue to take concrete, actionable steps that we can all truly commit to and invite more Filipinos and Asians to commit, too. I know this is difficult when we also have other, perhaps more pressing, issues that we advocate for. But at this point, we really are left with no choice. If we allow disinformation to continue to flourish, democracy itself—the very foundation of all our work, be it politically organizing on the ground, development work such as what Angat Buhay is continuing to do and others—this will continue to wither under attack and eventually be reduced to a complete shambles.

We have to consistently engage with our allies, networks, and supporters. We cannot just tap each other when elections are coming. We cannot just come together during those significant events. We have to band together, consistently, in all things big and small.

In 2020, I actively participated in the Senate inquiry into allegations involving the siphoning of health insurance funds, where it was alleged that PhP15 billion were pocketed. The then Senate Minority, led by Senator Frank, with Senator Kiko—and even from prison Senator Leila with her tireless handwritten communications—were all very active.

During the height of this investigation, as expected, fake news after fake news spread on social media. Facebook, You- should consciously remove ourselves from the temptations of a political reality that affirms only our own beliefs and biases. In the same Harvard study I cited earlier, the authors said that the Kakampinks also had “truth-denying tendencies in their political reality.”

Tube, and dubious websites, as if in a synchronized dark dance, were suddenly filled with content that had distortions of all kinds of facts to protect the past administration and implicate others, including me.

Our office then started creating all forms of materials—from infographics to short videos—that debunked all the false information. We compiled them in a Google drive, shared these with allies, volunteers, and networks, and created group chats to closely coordinate which posts to reply to or report. We should be able to make this kind of collaboration regular—not only when we are in the midst of a national issue, but in our daily lives, in small and steady ways.

This kind of collaboration was even more pronounced during the recent elections, especially in our Pink movement. Numerous people lent us their talents to create content to highlight our strengths, to challenge the lies, and to defend the truth. The level of creativity for this movement was, like Kiko said, one we had never experienced in our lifetime.

How can we keep the fire, the creativity of all of us, all of these people? How can we channel this enthusiasm into our fight against disinformation? How can we make media, digital literacy, and digital citizenship so exciting that wider sections of the public would want to join our cause?

During the campaign, the delight of the rallies was also in part because of the music, the dancing, and all kinds of art. Perhaps we can start hosting regular, entertaining events in which the public can join, where we not only talk about strategies on battling mis- and disinformation, but where everyone can also simply relax and enjoy. Where we can offer momentary relief from difficulties. Where we can stoke each other’s hopes.

We also need to know more and more whom we want to speak with, learn each other’s language, and meet where the people are. If they are on TikTok, we need to amplify our presence there. If they get their news on YouTube, we need to start uploading even more information there. If Facebook messenger is where everyone is talking, we should also be sustaining and widening conversations there.

The research used the “False Asia” trending incidents as an example, when the phrase went viral on Twitter every time Pulse Asia, an established survey firm, released data that were not in our favor. The researchers said that this parallel political reality also included personalities who dismissed voters as brainwashed by propaganda, and therefore, having no free will. The authors of the study argued that “such constructions dehumanize(d) voters by portraying them as deficient citizens incapable of making political judgements, therefore unworthy of engagement and deliberation.” They further emphasized that this rhetoric only affirmed the populist authoritarian or administration narrative that the media, fact-checking organizations, and any other dissenting voices are “anti-masa” or against the majority of Filipinos who are poor and powerless.

This is part of the reality, the truth, we have to face. Often, the truth is like medicine—bitter, but clarifying for the tasks ahead. So I hope we take these argumentations seriously and reflect on them, as we continue building our coalitions, with as many Filipinos as we can, in this great humanist project and among whom we need to count more adherence, as we continue building our coalitions toward a more mature democracy.

We should also accept that inasmuch as we see technology and social-media giants as contributors to the failures of our democracy, these remain to be platforms that the general public, the people we serve, our citizens, enjoy. If we are to build a stronger defense against disinformation, we have to immerse, listen, and talk to the public in a way that they can relate to, and find joy and hope in.

We in the opposition must strive to change the political environment in order to win the hearts and minds of the people. We must change the political environment itself, change and improve our relative strength within that political environment, change and improve the public perception of our strength. In order to win the hearts and minds of the people, we can in fact use these tools—the Internet, technology, and social networks—to not only broaden our appeal to the majority of the Filipinos, including those who did not vote for our candidates, but also to protect our democratic values for the long-term.

We have a monumental challenge ahead of us: the challenge of altering the political equilibrium, which in the last six years, has been stacked against us. But since when have we not been up for a fight?

Crucially also, as the study mentioned, we have to admit that for far too long we have been each other’s sounding boards to the point that perhaps sometimes we couldn’t recognize our own prejudices, our own blind spots. If we are to have a stronger fighting chance against disinformation, if we are to strengthen our commitment to democracy, we must ensure that our actions and conversations in conferences like this, in political spaces like this, continue to expand beyond ourselves.

We should go beyond our usual ways of doing, of organizing, of mobilizing, to continue to build alliances, movements of parties, and other connections that coalesce with and support each other in making democracy real—not just politically, but economically and socio-culturally as well. That fight for substantive democracy is arguably the most important content of our political struggles and of our political communications.

We have to start, and continue to start again and again, before it’s too late. We have learned many painful and costly lessons in the past, and we now have again these three years, these six years and beyond, another prime opportunity to grow from those mistakes and continue to construct a democracy that is truly felt by all.